A young Norwegian woman has been sentenced to 16 months in jail after she reported a rape in Dubai.

The 25-year-old was in the United Arab Emirates on a business trip when she was raped and reported the assault to the local police. Dubai police did not believe her, and instead took her passport and jailed her on suspicion of having had sex outside marriage.

More accurately authorities didn’t care whether or not the sex was consensual because it’s a non-issue. If you find that a cow fell through your window, you don’t ask whether the cow intentionally did this. It doesn’t matter. And that is how Muslim legal systems see women. They care that an extramarital sex act took place. And since it took place, they blame the woman.

That’s the wonderful moral and legal system that the Western left keeps trying to import into America and Europe.

A Norwegian woman sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai for having sex outside marriage after she reported an alleged rape said Friday she decided to speak out in hopes of drawing attention to the risks of outsiders misunderstanding the Islamic-influenced legal codes in this cosmopolitan city.

The case has drawn outrage from rights groups and others in the West since the 24-year-old interior designer was sentenced Wednesday. It also highlights the increasingly frequent tensions between the United Arab Emirates' international atmosphere and its legal system, which is strongly influenced by Islamic traditions in a nation where foreign workers and visitors greatly outnumber locals.

"I have to spread the word. ... After my sentence we thought, `How can it get worse?'"

Nationwide rallies against the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin drew small crowds, a sign that Americans had largely accepted the verdict and that race relations are not nearly as frayed as Al Sharpton's National Action Network had sought to indicate. The flagship rally in New York only drew a crowd of "hundreds," while a rally in Newport News, Virginia struggled to draw two dozen.

Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice.

As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous.

“Look, I gave him and [Attorney General Eric] Holder credit all week for trying to de-racialize the issue. And what Obama did, I think, unfortunately, today is to re-racialize it,” Krauthammer said on Fox News. “The first statement he issued after the verdict…was to talk about we have to honor what the jury decided and then he spoke about helping our communities helping our neighbors and gun control. But it wasn’t about race…but Obama re-injected it [Friday].”

The first thing to remember is that, with the Obama administration, there are no coincidences.

The attorney general of the United States is engaged in a shocking extrajudicial publicity campaign. Eric Holder is prosecuting George Zimmerman in the court of public opinion because he knows he wouldn’t have a prayer of convicting him in a court of law. Worse, in doing so, Holder is quite deliberately stoking resentment and tension — under the guise of leading a “national conversation” about race.

At precisely the same time, the United States secretary of health and human services has loathsomely injected race into the debate over Obamacare. Toward the conclusion of this week’s NAACP grievance fest, Kathleen Sebelius took the podium to demagogue Obamacare opponents. The fight against them, she inveighed, is reminiscent of “the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation.” She made these inflammatory remarks just as violence was erupting over Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting, no small thanks to Holder’s accomplice, Al Sharpton.

Not every liberal journalist was brought to tears over the President's belated statement on the George Zimmerman verdict. Columnist Rich Benjamin at Salon.com called the effort "safe, over-rated and airy" and compared it unfavorably to Attorney General Eric Holder's recent address to the NAACP by asking the provocative question: “Some of us have an Inner Child. Others have an Inner Ni**er. Is Holder the president’s conscience? Or his Inner Ni**er/Breitbart

It's an attention-getting way to suggest that Obama and Holder play "good cop/bad cop" on racial issues, and Benjamin goes on to show examples over their careers that support the idea. Benjamin is a Senior Fellow at the liberal think tank Demos, has written extensively about the Zimmerman case, and has been critical of Obama's reaction.
The "Inner Ni**er" charge got a volatile reaction from most liberals who absolutely loved the meaningless, identity-politics-pander that President Obama passed off as a meaningful speech, and they took to Twitter to let Benjamin know.

Yesterday, Michigan Ingham Country Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ruled that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing must be withdrawn because it is in her opinion unconstitutional (in Michigan, ◼ “reality is unconstitutional”).
Before issuing her ruling, Aquilina said ◼ this:

“It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,” the judge told assistant state Attorney General Brian Devlin. “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”

...To achieve this level of devastation, you usually have to be invaded by a foreign power. In the War of 1812, when Detroit was taken by a remarkably small number of British troops without a shot being fired, Michigan's Gov. Hull was said to have been panicked into surrender after drinking heavily.

Two centuries later, after an almighty 50-year bender, the city surrendered to itself.

The tunnel from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit is now a border between First World and Third World — or, if you prefer, developed world and post-developed world....

...Detroit has about 700,000 people now, more than 80% black. In the 1950's it had nearly two million residents and was the nation's fourth-largest city.
Thursday, their city became the largest U.S. municipality to declare bankruptcy. Others may soon follow. And in a disturbing, eerie way those festering financial problems locally are likely precursors of a similar simmering national debt dilemma.
Perhaps these words ring a bell for Americans watching their federal government in Washington: Over-spending, lack of jobs, no fiscal restraint, chronically high unemployment, bloated entitlements, inept politicians, corruption, ineffective governing, missing political courage. Figuring someone else will handle the debt down the road....

For municipal bankruptcy, all eyes across the nation now turn to Detroit.

The latest: Michigan Circuit Court Judge Rosemary Aquilina ordered Detroit’s bankruptcy filings be withdrawn because they violate state law guaranteeing that pensions must be paid to public employees. The bankruptcy filing seeks to reduce all city liabilities, including pensions, by 90 percent.

“ ‘It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,’ the judge told assistant state Attorney General Brian Devlin. ‘It’s also not honoring the president, who took [Detroit’s auto companies] out of bankruptcy.’”

She gets wrong what happened. Federal bankruptcy court would have dealt with the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies. But President Obama and the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress stepped in and passed bailout legislation. The two auto giants were declared “too big to fail....”

It’s an interesting web the union has spun for itself: its power to negotiate lavish pensions for teachers has helped bankrupt the city, which is now forced to sack teachers. And with Chicago’s budget deficit at $1 billion and revenue declining, there’s no end in sight, and no tenure and no pension is safe. How teachers react to the declining ability of unions to secure their interests in one of America’s great blue cities will tell us a lot about the blue model’s current bill of health.

The immediate impact on children and families of Chicago’s fiscal failure is obvious enough, but the long-term impact is perhaps even more grim. The city’s budget cuts, harrowing crime rate, and broken politics are forcing people out: Chicago’s population has declined to numbers not seen since before the 1920s, with the black population falling by almost a fifth in the past decade alone.

This trend means even less revenue for the city, even fewer children to fill the classrooms, and even more talent and potential lost.

Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”

Friday, July 19, 2013

I am not Trayvon Martin. Not just because if confronted by a local Latino homeowner, I'm not likely to pick up a fight with him and beat him until he shoots me.

I am also not Trayvon Martin because if I were shot and killed by any person, regardless of race, color or creed, you would never hear Obama talking about it because I look nothing like his son....

Twenty years ago, a young man who looked very much like me was stabbed to death in Crown Heights by a mob shouting, "Kill the Jew". His name was Yankel Rosenbaum. The man responsible for the race riot he was killed in has a show on MSNBC and is considered Obama's main liaison to the black community.

...Well, he’s not utterly alone now, is he? He has a bully pulpit to try to avenge the perceived psychological wounds of his childhood. Note, also, that Obama’s age at the time of the incident was very similar to Martin’s age at the time of his death, and note also that his grandmother indicated a fear that the panhandler might have hit her over the head if the bus hadn’t come in time. Shades of what actually happened to Zimmerman.

Seeing the above excerpt from Obama’s book, it’s no wonder he made the speech he did today. His political agenda dovetails nicely with his psychological one. Obama’s certainly not going to ground and pound Zimmerman, but he’ll use his formidable resources to perpetuate the idea that Zimmerman was a “typical white person” who profiled Martin for being black. The actual situation—whether it be that the panhandler was aggressively harassing his grandmother, or that Trayvon Martin was acting in a way that would have caused suspicion whatever his skin color—is of absolutely no importance to Obama.

We have listened to President Obama’s comments about the verdict in the Zimmerman Case. People are focusing on this quote: “Trayvon Martin could’ve been me 35 years ago.” To focus on this one line misses the nuances of the President’s message, which includes comments about how African Americans view the Zimmerman Case in the context of the history of racial disparity in America.

For more than a year, we have been listening to the conversation about this case -- from voices on every side -- and we have become very sensitive to the racial context that surrounds this case. We acknowledge Mr. Obama’s remarks regarding the frustration felt by some when viewed in context of our nation’s history, which includes racial insensitivities spanning generations, and existing even today, including within our criminal justice system.

While we acknowledge and understand the racial context of this case, we challenge people to look closely and dispassionately at the facts. We believe those who look at the facts of the case without prejudice will see that it is a clear case of self-defense, and we are certain that those who take a closer look at the kind of person George Zimmerman is -- something we understand the Department of Justice is currently doing -- we are confident they will find a young man with with a diverse ethnic and racial background who is not a racist, a man who is, in fact, sensitive to the complex racial history of our country.

It takes courage to talk about race. It took courage for our President to address the Zimmerman Case and candidly discuss how and why people are upset by the verdict. We would like to stress that the verdict was reached fairly and justly and that it reflects the letter of the law and represents the law’s proper application to the facts. While we acknowledge the racial context of the case, we hope that the President was not suggesting that this case fits a pattern of racial disparity, because we strongly contend that it does not.

This case has given the nation an opportunity to have a candid conversation about race. We would like to contribute to this discourse. Our President has clearly indicated he is willing to contribute to the discourse. As we begin this conversation, we want to say this: we cannot talk about race in sound bites. Before you cast an opinion about what the President said, be sure to listen to his comments in full. Before you judge George Zimmerman or disparage the verdict of the citizen jury, understand the facts in full. Agree not to listen to just what meets your predisposition, but to accept what exists.

Only in this way can we assure that the conversations we want to have, that we need to have, will be attended and listened to by those whose presence is necessary for a full discourse -- a discourse that can have positive consequences for our growth as a nation.

On Today, Gabe Gutierrez insisted that Detroit has "been in financial decline for decades." Like Liu on GMA, he offered the raw data, noting, "The tax base dwindled as the population plummeted from about two million in the 1950s to just 700,000 today."

But Gutierrez also claimed, "Many people saw this coming, but it still hurts." Why did people "see this coming?" The NBC journalist wouldn't offer an explanation.

Although the Today segment did not identify a clip of Democratic mayor Dave Bing, an onscreen graphic did note that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is a Republican....

...In short, let’s take a terrible event and make it a festival for all our ideological and racial ax-grinding and a showcase for our inability or unwillingness to reason clearly. Let’s do it in perpetually high dudgeon and while simultaneously patting ourselves on the back about our fearlessness and honesty.

Yes, Mr. Attorney General, you are right. This conversation is exactly what the country needs.

Last month, at a birthday party for a three-year-old, I was hit with the realization that most of the parents around me were in the grip of moral panic, the kind of fear of contamination dramatized so well in The Crucible. One mother was trying to keep her daughter from eating a cupcake, because of all the sugar in cupcakes. Another was trying to limit her son to one juice box, because of all the sugar in juice. A father was panicking because there was no place, in this outdoor barn-like space at some nature center or farm or wildlife preserve, where his daughter could wash her hands before eating. And while I did not hear any parent fretting about the organic status of the veggie dip, I became certain there were such whispers all around me.

Like any moral panic, nobody was immune to its contagion. Soon, I was fretting—but for different reasons. For all I knew, some of these kids weren’t immunized, and they were fed only unpasteurized milk. The other parents were worried about germs and microbes and genetically modified apricots—I was worried about the parents. I was surrounded by the new Puritans: self-righteous, aspiring toward a utopian perfectionism, therefore condemned to perpetual anxiety—and in their anxiety, a threat to me and my children....

It makes no sense to re-enslave ourselves with fear, worry, and stress. That is not liberal but reactionary. Just because Big Brother is inside us doesn’t mean he’s not still Big Brother.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office—that had been established—but to the office of the chief counsel.

That is a bombshell—such a big one that it managed to emerge in spite of an unfocused, frequently off-point congressional hearing in which some members seemed to have accidentally woken up in the middle of a committee room, some seemed unaware of the implications of what their investigators had uncovered, one pretended that the investigation should end if IRS workers couldn't say the president had personally called and told them to harass his foes, and one seemed to be holding a filibuster on Pakistan.

Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency....

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, finally woke the proceedings up with what he called "the evolution of the defense" since the scandal began. First, Ms. Lerner planted a question at a conference. Then she said the Cincinnati office did it—a narrative that was advanced by the president's spokesman, Jay Carney. Then came the suggestion the IRS was too badly managed to pull off a sophisticated conspiracy. Then the charge that liberal groups were targeted too—"we did it against both ends of the political spectrum." When the inspector general of the IRS said no, it was conservative groups that were targeted, he came under attack. Now the defense is that the White House wasn't involved, so case closed.

This is one Republican who is right about evolution.

Those trying to get to the bottom of the scandal have to dig in, pay attention. The administration's defenders, and their friends in the press, have made some progress in confusing the issue through misdirection and misstatement.

This is the moment things go forward or stall. Republicans need to find out how high the scandal went and why, exactly, it went there. To do that they'll have to up their game.

So the little fish are dropping dimes on bigger fish, and the bigger fish are ratting out their bosses. It’s a classic organized-crime takedown. Compare all this to the Obama Administration’s initial lies about low-level employees farting around in the chilly basements of Cincinnati....

Of course, O’Donnell and Senator Grassley’s investigators “have run into a wall of silence, leaving more questions than answers about whether abuses of the IRS system extend to private individuals and not just the tax-exempt groups already identified as victims.” Walls of silence are the primary product of the Obama Administration, followed closely by bankrupt green-energy companies and unemployment. We’ll soon find out if Congressman Issa really does have the jackhammer of testimony he’ll need to crack through those walls.

Eric Holder, who gets more headlines than any other member of the president’s Cabinet, and usually for the wrong things, confuses celebrity with credibility. He imagines celebrity makes him a credible champion of civil rights. He’s fond of citing a man whom he seems to regard as his equal as a civil rights pioneer.

But some of us knew Martin Luther King, and Mr. Holder, you’re no Martin Luther King.

We know Mr. Holder, too, as the attorney general whose office declined to prosecute Black Panthers who attempted to intimidate white voters in Philadelphia, approved the intimidation of the Associated Press, presided over the most sweeping collection of information on private citizens in the nation’s history, and authorized the killing of an American citizen by drone attack, depriving him of his civil rights....

Detroit declared bankruptcy today. For California, here are the takeaways from the Detroit News report:

“A bankruptcy judge could trump the state constitution by slashing retiree pensions, ripping up contracts and paying creditors roughly a dime on the dollar for unsecured claims worth $11.45 billion.”

That’s because the bankruptcy will be heard in a federal bankruptcy court. The California Constitution has similar clauses. California’s pension funds insist that, no matter what, the pensions are sacrosanct; that state law trumps federal bankruptcy law. The Detroit bankruptcy could provide an answer.

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr…

“proposed paying most of the money owed to secured creditors while pension funds, unions and unsecured bondholders would receive, in some cases, 10 cents on the dollar.”

That’s right: 10 percent. Which means the funds themselves effectively would become insolvent, and pensioners would not get paid.

The filing leads to a 30 to 90 day period that will determine whether or not the city of Detroit is eligible for Chapter 9 protection, and define the number of claimants who may compete for Detroit’s limited settlement resources. The petition seeks protection from unions and creditors who are renegotiating $18.5 billion in debt and liabilities, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“CVS/pharmacy has decided not to sell the current issue of Rolling Stone featuring a cover photo of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect,” the Facebook post read. “As a company with deep roots in New England and a strong presence in Boston, we believe this is the right decision out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones.”

Events at Chappaquiddick Island gained international attention on July 18, 1969, when the dead body of Mary Jo Kopechne was discovered inside an overturned car in a channel on the island. The car belonged to Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, who did not report the midnight incident to police authorities until the following morning.Kopechne’s body was recovered from the submerged car, and Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of “leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury”. He received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended. (Wikipedia)

“According to trusted sources that have contacted my office, many, if not all, of the survivors of the Benghazi attacks – along with others at the Department of Defense and CIA – have been asked or directed to sign additional Non-Disclosure Agreements about their involvement in the Benghazi attacks,” Wolf said on the House floor. “Some of these “new” NDAs, as they call them, I have been told, were signed as recently as this summer.”

The congressman expressed grave concerns that federal workers might have been coerced into silence.
Wolf also referenced a Marine Corps Times report that indicated a Marine colonel whose task force was responsible for special operations in northern and western Africa at the time of the attack is still on active duty. However, it was claimed the colonel was retired and therefore could not be forced to testify before Congress.

“If these reports are accurate, this would be a stunning revelation to any member of Congress – any member of Congress that finds this out – and to the American people,” Wolf said. “It also raises serious concerns about the propriety of the administration’s efforts to silence those with knowledge of the Benghazi attack and response.”

FOX News’ Carl Cameron reported Wednesday evening on the O’Reilly Factor that major evidence is expected to be revealed at Thursday’s hearing that proves, according to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, that the IRS targeting scandal goes “way higher up in the government” and that the IRS in DC “was ultimately calling the shots.”

WASHINGTON INVOLVED IN IRS TARGETING: Check out Darrell’s oped in today’s USA Today explaining how IRS officials in Washington were directly involved in the scrutiny of Tea Party applications.

FROM DARRELL’S OPED: “Hull [a veteran D.C. IRS tax specialist] and his supervisors explained to committee investigators that scrutiny of Tea Party applicants — and the reasons for delays and enhanced scrutiny — went beyond the routine. It involved Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official who would later assert her right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions before Congress, as well as the office of the IRS chief counsel, which is headed by one of only two political appointees at the IRS.”

Just for good measure, it sounds like the House will ratify the delay of the employer mandate as well, because enforcing the rule of law and holding a President accountable for abusing his office is so… 2008. Also, the Republicans want to emphasize that they think holding off on the mandates is a good idea, and make Obama pay a political price for giving businesses a break while leaving individuals to twist in the wind.

That’s good politics – it’ll be fun watching the Empty Chair threaten to veto a bill that would lift the burden of ObamaCare from the young people he’s desperately trying to squeeze for cash. You kids still have to buy overpriced health insurance, or else pay a special tax Barack Obama designed just for you! Maybe his approval ratings will finally get down in the thirties, where they belong.

But it’s also a very good idea to give businesses a break from that mandate, because ObamaCare is killing a job market already weakened by Obama’s other policies. (Hows that War On Energy going, Mr. President?) The U.S. Chamber of Commerce just released a survey showing that 74 percent of small businesses are planning to fire people, hold off on hiring or cut work hours because of ObamaCare’s expensive mandates.

Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who earlier in the day called for federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, said she joined a DOJ conference call to discuss the prospects.

“They were calling on us to actively refer anyone who had any information, that might build a case against Zimmerman for either a civil rights violation or a hate crime. They said they would very aggressively investigate this case.” [I'm sure they did.]

In addition, Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Laura Murphy, Washington Chapter head of the ACLU; and several national, Florida and Sanford-based “human relations” groups participated.

During the call, DOJ officials announced that they had set up an email address so people to send in “tips” that could help aid in their “investigation.” (Sanford.florida@usdoj.gov)

Things have been quiet for the citizen thought police ever since AttackWatch.com closed up shop, but vigilantes seeking justice for Trayvon Martin were given a new job today as the Justice Department announced its dedicated email address for tips into its investigation into George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury Saturday night, but Attorney General Eric Holder has teased that he’s still very interested in pursuing an investigation into possible civil rights violations.

Of course, the FBI already conducted an investigation into Zimmerman, interviewing friends, neighbors and co-workers, and found no evidence of racism. NBC’s damning 911 call turned out to be edited, so that’s no help. The only logical step, then, is a nationwide fishing expedition for anonymous tips that might hint otherwise.

#ZimmermanTipLine Because we at DOJ are just so busy hacking computers of journalists that actually investigate, we need you to do it for us

The chief counsel’s office for the Internal Revenue Service, headed by a political appointee of President Obama, helped develop the agency’s problematic guidelines for reviewing “tea party” cases, according to a top IRS attorney....

Previous accounts from IRS employees had shown that Washington IRS officials were involved in the controversy, but Hull’s comments represent the closest connection to the White House to date. No evidence so far has definitively linked the White House to the agency’s actions....

Democratic and Republican lawmakers in recent months have offered competing narratives about who was to blame for the IRS’s actions. GOP lawmakers have suggested that Washington IRS officials and even the White House had a hand in the controversy, while Democrats have said the issue started with mid-level employees in the agency’s tax-exemption office in Cincinnati.

While talking about the controversy in May, White House press secretary Jay Carney referred to “the apparent conduct by our IRS officials in Cincinnati” and said “line IRS employees in Cincinnati improperly scrutinized 501 (C)(4) organizations by using words like ‘tea party,’ in quotes, and ‘patriot.’”

Ben Kruidbos, Corey's former director of information technology, was fired after testifying at a pre-trial hearing on June 6 that prosecutors failed to turn over potentially embarrassing evidence extracted from Martin's cell phone to the defense, as required by evidence-sharing laws.

"We will be filing a whistleblower action in (Florida's Fourth Judicial District) Circuit Court," said Kruidbos' attorney Wesley White, himself a former prosecutor who was hired by Corey but resigned in December because he disagreed with her prosecutorial priorities. He said the suit will be filed within the next 30 days.

Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.). But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that contain the location information of many millions of innocent Americans stretching back for months or even years.

This is what we have found after analyzing more than 26,000 pages of documents from police departments in cities and towns across the country, obtained through freedom of information requests by ACLU affiliates in 38 states and Washington, D.C. As it becomes increasingly clear that ours is an era of mass surveillance facilitated by ever cheaper and more powerful computing technology (think about the NSA's call logging program), it is critical we learn how this technology is being used. License plate readers are just one example of a disturbing phenomenon: the government is increasingly using new technology to collect information about all of us, all the time, and to store it forever – providing a complete record of our lives for it to access at will.

"Instead of cutting deals with the president's liberal allies, we should be opposing them, every step of the way," Cheney said in her announcement video. "This is our state and our country, we don't have to accept what Washington, D.C., is doing for us."

In the past ten days alone Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates pledged $12 billion in cash, fuel, food, wheat, interest-free loans, and gifts. Vast shipments of gasoline and wheat have poured in so fast that the four-hour standard waits at gasoline stations and a shortage of bread disappeared overnight.

No doubt the support is sincere, but no doubt, too, that the endorsement is also driven by the danger Islamists represent in these countries’ own backyards. On July 3, the day President Morsi was removed by the army in Cairo, a court at Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, sentenced 61 professionals of the Muslim Brotherhood to between 10 and 25 years for plotting a coup.

As the estrangement between Egypt and its rich allies comes to end, a clearer strategic view is emerging. Oil-rich Arabs are turning the clock back to a time when Egypt stood as top dog in confrontation with Iran, while resuming its leadership role as big brother. Poorer Arab nations including Jordan, Algeria, and Morocco, lost in the wilderness for years, are finding their place in the new order, as with anti-Islamist forces in Tunisia and Syria....

The new pan-Arab cynicism is rooted in disappointments with such Islamist militias as Hezbollah and Hamas, piled upon multiple atrocities by Islamists against fellow Arabs in Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq and a loss of interest in the so-called “Peace Process” that has led nowhere.

Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records... A government watchdog has found for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases....

In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence.

Mr. Grassley has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain why the Justice Department chose not to prosecute any of the cases. The Iowa Republican told The Washington Times that the IRS “is required to act with neutrality and professionalism, not political bias.”

In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.

The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.

That's just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can't get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May....

It is imperative that the U.S. focus on innovative and creative policies. Otherwise, the five-year crisis in employment will continue even when the economy seems to be recovering. Without such a focus, millions of American families whose breadwinners are unemployed or underemployed will remain dispiriting and apprehensive about the future, especially the young who are entering the workforce. The country needs a real recovery, not a phony one.

Despite the administration's controversial decision to delay forcing companies to join Obamacare for a year, three-quarters of small businesses are still making plans to duck the costly law by firing workers, reducing hours of full-time staff, or shift many to part-time, according to a sobering survey released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate," said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.

Under Obamacare, just 30 hours — not the nationally recognized 40 hours — is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine.

Another wrinkle to the greatest legislative disaster in modern history is revealed in a new report called “Public Health Insurance, Labor Supply, and Employment Lock,” excerpted by James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute. The “employment lock” concept is of particular interest. It seems that the desire to acquire health insurance is a significant factor in prompting many low-income people to seek employment, and by relieving that incentive, ObamaCare could prompt a lot of marginal employees to give up and slide into welfare dependency. It doesn’t help that entry-level labor is not exactly a seller’s market these days.

The Senate will now continue as planned with votes on seven stalled executive branch nominees, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's threat to change the body's rules hanging over the proceedings. Members of both parties said that negotiations toward a bipartisan solution would continue.

This is getting out of hand, and it’s long past time for President Obama to find his voice and speak out against it. There were more riots in Los Angeles on Monday, featuring “multiple acts of vandalism and several assaults,” which LAPD chief Charlie Beck delicately chose not to discuss at length when announcing 13 arrests....

California Democrats were, predictably, worse than useless after the violence in Los Angeles:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer sent a letter Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder supporting the Justice Department decision to review the case to determine whether Martin’s civil rights were violated.

“I respect the fact that the jury has spoken … but I don’t think this should be the last word,” Boxer wrote in the letter.

“Trayvon Martin’s death was a tragedy and has raised many sensitive and important issues,” she wrote. “We should explore every avenue in an effort to ensure that something like this never happens again.”

This is exactly the kind of garbage that’s egging these demonstrators on. There isn’t going to be a civil-rights trial; the feds would lose, badly, and they know it. Barack Obama isn’t going to throw away the middle-class vote by making his Justice Department look like a gang of politicized inquisitors, and aggravate the angry demonstrators by simultaneously appearing incompetent.

Perhaps they thought the mob’s energy would diffuse if they thought they had another trial to look forward to, but instead they’re effectively putting an official stamp on the “George Zimmerman is a racist who got away with murder” narrative. Senator Boxer, and the rest of the government, should be speaking in one voice to denounce violent and disruptive demonstrations, and promise dire consequences for those who perpetrate them, not feeding their paranoia....

JEANTEL: 'THE JURY, THEY OLD. THAT'S OLD SCHOOL PEOPLE. WE IN NEW SCHOOL. MY GENERATION'...
ZIMMERMAN MAY HAVE BEEN 'A RAPIST'...
'I kept telling him run, run, run'...
Video...
Explains Difference Between 'N*gga' And 'N*gger' To Piers Morgan...

Meanwhile: Four Children Gunned Down in Chicago During 20-day Zimmerman Trial...

An Orlando lawyer said he does not believe George Zimmerman's shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was racially motivated.

CNN analyst Mark NeJame pointed to a black-and-white picture of a family of three, including a dark-skinned man he claims was Zimmerman's great-grandfather.

He also identified a woman pictured standing above the man as Zimmerman's grandmother, and a small child in the man's arms as Zimmerman's mother.

Speaking to News 13 Friday, NeJame said the photo was just one piece among many that led him to change his mind about whether Zimmerman was racially profiling Trayvon Martin.

"If President Obama says his son would have looked like Trayvon Martin, then if you look at these pictures, his grandparents and great-grandparents would have looked like George Zimmerman's grandparents and great-grandparents," NeJame said during an appearance Thursday on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."

Book Description: Perched on a hilly clearing between the Pacific Ocean and a rainforest along California’s coastal highway, Arcata occupies a special niche behind the “Redwood Curtain.” A cultural and geographic crossroads, Arcata’s story is told in the faces of its people. The Wiyot were the first to inhabit Kori; their massacre on nearby Indian Island was boldly condemned by young Arcata (then Union) newspaper editor Bret Harte. Austin Wiley and sons carried on the newspaper tradition as pioneers Zelia Vaissade and Henrietta Moranda helped establish dairies on the Arcata Bottom. Arcata matured into a college town with Humboldt State College. Its first graduate, Susie Baker Fountain, became Humboldt County’s first historian. Working men like Warren Dowling built the town’s homes and churches, while the first woman city councilmember, Alexandra Stillman, helped usher in the modern age. Today, killing fields escapees Kimhak and Rasmey Chum make doughnuts and pizza that draw people at all hours, and Arcata fairly boils as a stew of contrasting traditions, styles, and icons with its artsy, eclectic, liberated citizens bringing Humboldt County’s North Coast its most vibrant tiny big city.

Author Bio: Arcata Eye newspaper editor Kevin L. Hoover plumbed private collections, museums, and university archives to locate Arcata’s legendary locals. ◼ AVAILABLE AT LOCAL BOOK SIGNINGS (We'll be posting the schedule), and at Arcadia Publishing

"Like millions of other Americans, our members are front-line workers in the American economy. We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision.

Now this vision has come back to haunt us.

[E]ven though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies."

These union leaders were A-OK with company group plans being taxed to help cover the cost of the subsidized ones... but now that they've figured out that "their" group plans face the same fate they just can't believe it. Surely Obama, Pelosi and Reid wouldn't have done that to them?

"“Our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretation for their respective grievances,” such as the employer mandate delay.

“We have a problem, you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe.”

It’s not every day that union bosses sound like policy experts at The Heritage Foundation.

But the beginning of the Obamacare letter from the heads of three major unions—the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and UNITE-HERE—to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is eerily similar to our experts’ writings.

The unions, of course, were heavy supporters of Obamacare, but even they can’t deny its effects now.

“When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them,” they wrote. “Sadly, that promise is under threat.”

...More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public's faith in that system and their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, "Is this still America?" may feel some measure of relief.

But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence -- which became painfully more obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial -- will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.

The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

It was a clever way to play the race card, as he had done before, when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested.

But it did not stop there. After the local police in Florida found insufficient evidence to ask for Zimmerman to be prosecuted, the Obama administration sent Justice Department investigators to Sanford, Florida, and also used the taxpayers' money to finance local activists who agitated for Zimmerman to be arrested....

California is almost always there to boost President Obama's policy agenda as he fights fierce headwinds in Congress, working with the executive branch to carry out the administration's vision on healthcare, renewable energy and clean air. But when the topic shifts to overhauling education, the state has become one of the administration's biggest headaches.

California has defiantly refused to follow the administration's lead in grading the performance of teachers and using those measurements to reward the best teachers and punish the worst. The state is one of very few that have told Washington that under no conditions will it put in place the type of teacher evaluation system Obama has championed.

As a result, the administration has not given California a waiver from the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law, leaving thousands of local schools exposed to expensive federal sanctions.

California is one of the last holdouts in the country; the administration has succeeded in persuading reluctant officials in Illinois and Texas to come aboard. State officials say they are resolved to stand firm, regardless of the consequences.

...Cruz said in a statement that the introduction of the legislation is consistent with his long-standing position that no continuing resolution or other appropriations measure should fund Obamacare.

“The Administration’s recent announcement to delay the onerous and unpopular employer mandate until after the 2014 election, coupled with its announcement to delay income and health status eligibility requirements in favor of an honor system for the most expensive entitlement for our generation, confirms what has been obvious from the start—this law is a colossal mistake,” said Cruz.
All 45 Republican Senators called for a permanent delay of Obamacare earlier this week in a letter to Barack Obama.

Cruz added, “The Administration’s selective enforcement of Obamacare’s implementation is no indication that the law is going away. To the contrary, it demonstrates the President’s unyielding determination to force the unworkable law on the American people.”

“Delaying only one aspect of this tangled mess leaves Americans holding the tab for an irreparably broken law they do not support,” said Cruz. “Moreover, it leaves in motion many of the most egregious parts of the law, ensuring they will take root in just a few short months. This is untenable.”

The Texas senator agreed with the lead Senate Democrat author of Obamacare Max Baucus that Obamacare is a “huge train wreck.”

“President Obama wants to delay the employer mandate – giving large businesses a temporary reprieve from part of Obamacare’s job-killing impact – but he is unwilling to give hardworking American families the same consideration,” Cruz continued. “But everyone, not just large corporations, deserves to be spared being forced to participate in the Obamacare ‘train wreck.’”

...A picture of Jocelyn was released to the public as police, firefighters and K-9 officers searched for her. News of the kidnapping weighed heavy on Boggs' mind.

So he and a friend set out to search for her.

Around 6:48 p.m., the boys spotted a maroon or burgundy colored sedan, possibly a Chevy, on Betz Farm Lane, with a girl matching Rojas' description.

According to the teens the driver was a male, approximately 50 to 70-years-old.

They followed the vehicle for about 15 minutes before it stopped in the 1700 block of Betz Farm Lane.

"If he wasn't gonna stop, I was probably gonna jump in the middle of the car," said Boggs. "As soon as the guy started noticing that we were chasing him, he stopped at the end of the hill and let her out and she ran to me and said that she needed her mom."

Boggs took Rojas to police and she got her request: mom was on her way.

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We bring you news and views for Republicans - from Humboldt County to Washington DC - news, opinion and analysis from the best reporters, columnists and bloggers. A one stop shop with links to local, state and national groups, contact info for the Board of Supervisors, the City Councils, Planning Commission, and more.

“Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” .....Robert A. Heinlein quotes (American science-fiction Writer, 1907-1988)